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| Bye Bye Subic Bay |
Oh my goodness, where do I begin? I am sitting in the comfort
of a mosquito net in a nipa hut all of my own in Dauin, Negros Oriental,
Visayas at this very moment. A nipa hut is a little traditional Filipino house
made completely of bamboo. It looks so nifty minus the multitude of insects and
even a few fuzzy rodents… it is open at the top before the roof and also a bit
on the sides, so I share my new home with many more of God’s wonderful
creatures…but I have Wi-Fi thanks to the house next door! It really is amazing
how much easier this experience is having Internet at home, not to mention the
gorgeous beach and coral reef a 5-minute walk from my hut. Dauin is quite a
magical place, if you Google it, you will see that it is “home of the gentle
people.” It is a tiny rural village, however it has amazing dive spots that few
tourists have discovered. Basically, I can grab my snorkel, walk out to the
marine sanctuary, and swim around wherever I want to for free and see tons of
colorful sea beasts and exotic fish, even my favorite, the wonderous seahorse.
IT IS SO COOL! Seriously, I will probably do this every day. I will no doubt
get scuba certified here, because it is so cheap and people get trained in this
same spot right near me, supposedly there is a famous guy named Harold who
gives huge discounts to PC volunteers. I am getting all sorts of juicy tips and
chika chika from the volunteers who are scattered around Negros and have been
here for a while. The most well-known and superb scuba spot is off Apo Island,
which is a 30-minute boat ride from me. I am told that it is guaranteed to sea
giant sea turtles feeding near the shore every early morning. All in all, this
place has got it going on! I love that it is such a small village and I will
get to know every single person here very well (almost everyone is part of the
same giant family as my hosts…host mom has 11 siblings), but also the bigger
city of Dumaguete is only 30-minutes away with many fun things to do and the
airport when I want to escape being a fish in a fishbowl for a bit.
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| My Lovely Nipa Hut Home |
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| My Personal Potty Room... Tabo Expert Now... |
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| Cooking Area |
I had my first couple of days at school already. Dauin
National High School has a little over 1000 students and seems to have a great
atmosphere. It is proud of being an “environmentally friendly” campus, with no
trash receptacles because they have a Cebuano slogan that basically translates
to “your trash your problem.” I found this awesome and hilarious. Shockingly,
it works and kids take home their trash, it is really clean all around besides
some of the ceilings are falling through and the desks are a broken
clusterfuck…but that’s what I am here for! They are very proud of their male
volleyball team who wins every tournament. They also want me to coach the boys’
basketball team! I am actually really looking forward to that since a few of
them were already impressed by my celeb appearance when they were shooting
around once. I am still figuring out my teaching schedule, but I will have two
7th grade classes and three 12th grade classes. There are
a few students in my 12th grade class who are older than me…a little
awkward. There is also a 28 year old in my 7th grade class; things
work a little differently here if you haven’t figured that out yet...which is
likely because I don’t think I quite have yet! The school had a big
presentation and event for me on my first day, there was a big banner welcoming
me. I was told I had to make a speech to the whole school, parents, and
representatives from Dep Ed or Department of Education, aka the big wigs in an
hour. Blah. Peace Corps has definitely made me get used to being put on the
spot, so surprisingly, I did not struggle to much with this…because I spoke in
English, haha. The funniest part was how I was introduced by one of the
teachers, she was holding my resume in her hands from who knows where, and she
listed off my so called skills and added my hobbies and all of the countries I
have travelled to. It sounded a little like a dating advertisement and I
chuckled. It was overwhelming meeting so many people with complicated names,
every single person commenting on my looks, and being started at all alone by
so many people all day, but that is something we have all gotten used to since
arriving here from another planet. I really did think I would blend in? but it
is my honker of a nose that they like so much because Filipinos have very flat
noses. Chloe never let me forget that, oh how I miss my little shadow!
I am slowly but surely picking up Visayan/Cebuano, but it
will definitely take time. I eat all my meals and hang out a lot at the main
house across from my hut. There is my host mom(Joy) and dad(Allan), two host
sisters ages 5(Mariz) and 7(Nicole), 23 year old brother(Adonis),
grandmother(Lola), 1 dog, and 3 cats, no one speaks a lick of English except
for Joy the science teacher, so that is great for my language immersion. I have
had the best mangos of my life here, from the tree growing right outside my
door. There are also tons of palm trees with coconuts and kalamungay, or
Visayan horseradish trees, which everyone is so proud of here. Another thing
about the Visayas that I was looking forward to is all of the spectacular
seafood. For my first dinner I had some giant delish pink fish, and my sisters
were fighting over who got to eat the eyes…Another random funny fact, I guess
my Subic host mom found my Dauin host mom on Facebook and talked with her over
chat for an hour about my favorite foods and what I am like. So cute. If you haven’t seen, that whole Subic family
has been blowing up my Facebook, I miss them so much already! Daniel, Hillary,
and I promised that we would be back for Fiesta in January, so we need to start
planning that excursion! Also, my school’s principal took me up to the
beautiful mountain province of Valencia yesterday to see the Girls Scouts camp.
Over 3500 girl scouts had been camping out there for the past 3 days and they
had thousands of tents set up. Slightly smelly but so cool to look out at! There
will be so much more to come on my adventures in Dauin, since I will be here
for the next two years, so let me wrap up Subic and our Swearing-In Ceremony in
Manila next.
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| My Bamboo Roof from Inside |
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| My Backyard with Apo Island |
Wow was it sad on my last day in Subic. Started off with a
palenke trip with Daniel, we were walking through the market and he sees
roaches crawl right over my feet and I did not even notice a thing…nothing
unusual at this point. Ha, and it went downhill from there. I had gotten so
close with my host family, we all used the same soap for goodness sake! So, my
last blog told all about my amazing surprise party that my host family threw with
the giant tarp of my face, by the way, other volunteers were so amazed by this
and I seem to be the only person out of all 66 of us who got anything like
this! Proves another reason why my family is the best. Filipinos are very
sentimental and emotional people, I can say that because every single one I
have met thus far has been so. The saddest thing is, these people are not used
to having new friends leave them. In the states, we are all accustomed to
moving around and getting to know new places/people, however, here, families
stay in the same houses where they are born their whole lives, then their
children stay and so on and so on. So, they hardly ever get close with new people
who leave…made it all very very sad and hard. Goodbyes are no fun at all. As I
packed away my life once again, while “white trash party” by Eminem played on
repeat outside my window 17 times, I thought more about what was ahead of me. I
had gotten so much into the Peace Corps training Subic routine, I had my best
friend, boyfriend, loving spectacular Filipino family, and now it was all going
to be taken away! I was solemn for a brief moment, but then I remembered how I
knew exactly what I was getting into when I signed up for this. I just had no
idea I would meet the most amazing people I have ever known. Hillary and I gave
our tear jerking speech at the end of the family farewell party, many a tears
were shed and smooshy hugs a had. Daniel’s goof of a host father told everyone
that our wedding is being planned for January Fiesta so to come back for it. My
mother did little to discourage this, more like cackling laughter of encouragement.
I am quite used to awkward moments like this since being in the Philippines,
and we are always able to “joke-lang” and laugh it off. We also completed our 2-hour Subic teacher training, we ended up compiling 20 binders of "Innovative Teaching Methodologies" concerning Multiple Intelligences, Internet Resources, Phonology, and Learning Styles. Daniel made an awesome video explaining it all that we put on 10 flash drives to give to our partner teachers. I also pulled through getting the 14 giant Tarps made, doubles of 7 designs with grammar rules. The teachers were so appreciative and impressed. Oh, and also after the
farewell party, besides the point, a giant bouquet of yellow flowers and sparkly things were
waiting in my room for me, because my family knows my favorite color at the
moment is yellow. Like I haven’t been showered with enough gifts and love
already!
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| TARPS, wish I got a photo of all 7! |
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| Daniel Presenting our Community Project for the teachers of Subic High |
Now on to Manila. Manila. Manila is definitely in a league
of its own. It is unbelievably crowded mixed with ritzy glam, clubs, and
hotels, right alongside extreme poverty. Everywhere you walk you see babies and
mothers sleeping in filthy rags on cardboard, crumpled bodies of people curled
up against one another for comfort, and the most street children anywhere in
the world dodging between traffic while begging for money. I don’t think you
ever get used to seeing all of this, but it is terrifying how easily it is to ignore
them, myself included. As I talked about briefly before though, it is just
feeding the cycle as well as putting yourself in danger if you try to do
anything else. We stayed in a place right across from the U.S. Embassy where
Swearing-In was taking place. It was such a treat to have a shower and AC for a
few days, also always fun when we all get together, hence Hobbit Hole adventure.
We had read about this place that had been established by a former Peace Corps
volunteer and only employs people with dwarfism. We obviously got our hopes up
too high because there were only a couple of midgets there, but everyone was so
friendly and it was still really fun drinking “flaming frodos.” Each cluster of
training sites had to prepare a short cultural presentation in advance to
perform at the Embassy for Swearing-In. Our group revamped the Filipino story
of the first man and woman, “Malakas at Maganda,” and added a bit of humor and
PC volunteer ending with a twist. I was a lizard with a chase scene, fun stuff.
Other groups sang songs and did dances, but ours was all in Tagalog and the
best of course. For the big event, a huge portion of the fellas bought
“Barongs” to wear, the traditional male formal wear in the Philippines that
buttons all the way to the top. Daniel looked pretty snappy. After all of the
festivities, it was time to say goodbyes again as we all departed for our
permanent sites the next morning. No surprise, we are planning reunions
already. One of the biggest festivals in the Philippines actually takes place
on my island of Negros in October and is supposedly a giant Mardi Gras, which a
big group of us are hoping to crash.
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| The Feared Foursome |
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| Official PCVs at last |
Well I suppose that is it for now! I can’t reiterate how
much I love my site and that I can get everywhere important (school, beach,
market, home, bus) within an 8-minute walk! Perfect small size, stunning
mountains, crystal clear beach with coral reef, DIFFERENT COLORED SEA HORSES.
Sea horses forever. I have a wonderful host family once again, brilliant mentor
teacher at the high school (Kathy), sweet students who want me to start a GLEE
club, great principal (Ma’am Alcala), scrumptious fruits, my own nipa hut, and
so much more. It will be difficult starting from scratch with a whole new
language, but the teachers at school are overly willing to help me. I am
missing Daniel and all my PC friends like crazy already (missing family back
home more than imaginable at this point!), but thank heavens for cheap texting
here and skype working so well. COME VISIT ME!
